Fashion E-Commerce Photography Lighting Solutions
When selling products online, especially Fashion items, you need to make sure that the images you use to display the items are both professional quality whilst also displaying all the fine details that may be part of the particular product being sold. The best way to achieve this is to make sure that your photography receives the correct lighting to capture the perfect image. In this blog, we look into two different example lighting solutions, one with Studio Flash Lighting and the other with LED lighting, to give you an idea of what set-up would be perfect for you.
Flash or LED Lighting?
Firstly, you need to decide which type of lighting would be best for you, Flash or LED Lighting? Flash lighting would create a quick burst of powerful light, which helps to offer better results in your overall photography, but you may find it is more difficult to get precisely how you want it. LED lighting would be a constant light source that you would be able to see and adjust to get your desired results straight away. When using Flash lighting, it is highly recommended to only use a DSLR Camera as this need to be very precise when capturing the shot. For LED lighting, given that this enables you to shoot at wider apertures for a shallow depth-of-field look, you would be able to shoot with both DSLR Cameras or a Smartphone device.
For this particular style of photography, we would recommend LED Lighting as it is best suited for situations where you don’t have a studio space available and may not have a DSLR camera to take the images, plus it would allow you to also capture any video in the future if required. But if you do have a proper studio space available and a professional DSLR camera, then Flash Lighting would be a suitable option.
Lighting Example Set-Up 1 – Studio Flash Lighting
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LUMI400II Professional Corporate Headshot 3 Head Perfection Studio Flash Kit and LUMI II 400 Clamshell Lighting Kit (Gemini GS400 II)
For this particular style of photography, we would recommend using a minimum of four lighting units. One lighting unit to be the key light on the product itself, another lighting unit as a fill light and the final two units as background lights. The reason to have two lighting units focused onto the background is to remove any shadows or reflections that may be created by the product, which then allows it to be separated from the background to be the sole focus of the Photography.
For the lighting units, we recommend four of our LUMI400 II Flash units which are 400Ws mains powered studio flash strobe lights, each offering a 6 f-Stop Power Range to allow you to adapt the lighting to better suit a particular product, fast flash durations for sharper photography and quick recycling times to reduce the wait between each individual shot. For the main key light, we recommend using our 150cm Easy Open Octagonal Softbox that comes with two layers of diffusion for soft and gentle lighting and a honeycomb grid to offer even more control of the lighting. The large 150cm size means that this would be suitable for both half body and full body Photography, ideal if you have a full-length outfit that you wish to sell. For the fill light, we recommend using our 30x140cm Easy Open Strip Softbox to offer a wide spread lighting to fill the remaining space of your shoot. For the two remaining lights being used as Background lights, we would recommend using our 60x90cm Easy Open Rectangular Softboxes, as these would allow you to properly angle the lighting directly onto the background to make sure that the background is completely covered in lighting to remove unwanted shadows from the product.
For stands, we have two recommendations for this lighting set-up. For the Key light with 150cm Softbox attached, we recommend using our 2-in-1 Reclined Boom Stand, as this gives you more freedom to position the lighting in different places compared to using a standard light stand to make sure your product is properly lit. The Boom Arm has a maximum extension of 180cm, giving you a wide range of lighting options to choose from, and the boom arm can be inserted into the central stand to create a 400cm light stand if required. For the remaining lighting units, we would recommend our 240cm Air Cushioned Light Stands. These light stands feature an Air Cushioned design to prevent possible sudden collapses of the light stand, which could damage your equipment. Each stand also offers a height range of 79cm to 240cm, allowing you to position these in multiple different options to better suit your shooting space and requirements.
As you would be using Flash lighting units, you would need to use a Trigger in order to communicate and control the lighting units from your camera. We would recommend using our PRO AC 2.4GHz Trigger as this particular trigger features a universal hot-shoe which means that it can be used with a range of different camera brands, perfect if you decide to change/upgrade your camera in the future.
Lighting Example Set-Up 2 – LED Lighting
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LED200D MKIII Daylight Balanced LED Studio Light Twin Kit and LED200D MKIII Daylight Balanced LED Triple Softbox Kit
This particular kit is very similar to the previous mentioned kit, but with a few changes to make this a complete LED Lighting set-up. We still recommend four lighting units, with for the Key light, one for the Fill light and two for the Background lights to make sure your product, background and remaining space receives ample lighting.
In terms of the lights themselves, we recommend using four of our LED200D MKIII lighting units, which each offer 196W daylight balanced lighting units that use the latest High-Intensity Integrated LED technology. Each unit offers a CRI of 95 which means that accurately reproduce the colours and a TLCI of 97 to capture impeccable colour consistency, perfect to capture the smallest details in your fashion products.
Regarding the lighting modifiers, these would be the same as the options mentioned in the previous kit. For the Key light, we recommend attaching our 150cm Octagonal Easy-Open Softbox to make sure the product itself receives the proper light coverage and the two layers of diffusion help to reduce any reflections being caused. For the Fill light, we recommend attaching our 30x140cm Easy-Open Strip Softbox to properly fill the remaining space to remove any shadows, and for the two background lights we recommend attaching our 60x90cm Easy-Open Rectangular Softbox to make sure the light is focused directly onto the background to complete remove any unwanted shadows or reflections.
For the stands, again we recommend to use the same stands as mentioned in the previous lighting kit. With the Key light, we recommend using our 2-in-1 Reclined Boom Stand to allow you to position the light in multiple places to give your fashion products the perfect lighting. With the Fill light and the Background lights, we recommend our 240cm Air Cushioned stand as the Air Cushioned design helps to securely hold your equipment in place and prevent any unwanted collapses.
Background Example Set-Up 1
For our first background set-up, we have our 3m x 6m Anti-Crease Oldbury White Backdrop. This particular background features a Heavy-Duty Fabric design to prevent any deterioration over time and the Chroma-Key design means that it is virtually reflection free, perfect for shooting Fashion Products that feature reflective designs such as Jewellery. The background features a stitched loop at the top to allow it to be placed onto a crossbar to be held in place. For background stand, we recommend our Telescopic Background Stand, as it features a maximum width of 300cm which is suitable for this particular background. This background stand features a lightweight yet durable and strong aluminium build to provide protection during intense use and provide extra support for heavy backgrounds.
Background Example Set-Up 2
For our second background set-up, we have our 2x4m Dual Sided Grey/White Vinyl Backdrop (we recommend using the white side of this background). The Background has a hard-wearing vinyl build that is Colour Impregnated and Fade Resistant, perfect for protection during long-term use, and a Matte finish to eliminate any unwanted reflections that may be caused by your product. This background features an Aluminium Central Core that can be used on a crossbar, and is recommended to be used with our Telescopic Background Stand as mentioned above. The Crossbar in this stand can be adjusted in length between 120~300 cm, perfect to adjust to suit the 2m width of the Vinyl Background.
Example Lighting Layout
We have created this Mock example of where to position to position each lighting unit to order to create the best lighting and capture the perfect shot. The Key Light is placed above and to the side of the camera facing directly onto the subject, with Fill Light is placed to the side and in-line with the subject and the background lights are angled inwards facing onto the background.
Pre-Made Kit
We here at PiXAPRO understand that all of this information can be a lot and making sure you purchase the correct products may still be confusing. With this in mind, we have created a few pre-made kits that would be suitable for Fashion E-Commerce Photography to make things easier for you
DAYLiTE60D MKII Four-light E-Commerce Fashion Kit
This kit has been designed for single subject photography in mind, mainly when displaying Fashion items on a mannequin. This kit comes with 4x Daylite60D MKII Lighting units included, which are our 60W Daylight Balanced LED Lighting units that offer a CRI of ≥95 for accurate colour reproduction in your shots and a Flicker-Free design to allow you to shoot at virtually any framerate without issue. They also feature a Built-in Cooling Fan and Heat Sink to prevent any overheating and to safely disperse any heat being produced over extended periods of time. This kit does come with the recommend 4 Softboxes included, but due to the kit being focused on single-subject photography, these sizes do differ compared to previously recommended. The softboxes for the Background lights would still be our 60x90cm Rectangular Softboxes, but the Key Light Softbox is our 95cm Octagonal Softbox and our Fill Light Softbox is our 30x120cm Softbox to better focus the lighting on the single subject. This kit would also come with our 1.35mx10m White Paper Background and Background Stand Kit, which offers the perfect size for a single-subject shot without taking away any necessary space.
LED100D MKIII Four-light E-Commerce Fashion Kit
This kit has been designed for either single or double subject photography, suitable for shooting mannequins displaying Fashion items for an E-Commerce store. This kit comes with 4x LED100D MKIII Lighting Units, which are our 100W Daylight Balanced LED Lighting Units that can be dimmed down to 10% of their power to better suit any given shooting environment. The LED100D MKIII features a Re-Designed Heat-Dissipation system that operates at less than 18dB, which also makes the LED100D MKIII suitable for video shooting in the future. This kit features the same softboxes as the previously mentioned kit, with 2x 60x90cm Rectangular, 1x 95cm Octagonal and 1x 30x120cm Strip Softboxes, but due to the additional power of the LED100D MKIII, this would allow the lighting to be spread more to make sure that the multiple subjects are properly lit during shooting. This kit also comes with our 2x4m Grey/White Vinyl Background, which allows you to change between the colours to better suit the particular product being photographed.
LED200D MKIII Four-light E-Commerce Fashion Lifestyle Kit
This kit is perfect for shooting multiple subjects displaying Fashion product for E-Commerce stores. This kit comes with 4x LED200D MKIII, which are our 200W Daylight Balanced LED Lighting units that create super accurate colour representation due to a CRI of 95+ and TLCI of 97+, ideal for displaying all the fine details in your fashion items. This lighting unit features a super durable build-quality to keep your equipment safe over a long period of time, and can be control directly from the unit and using a remote dongle/control combination (Sold Separately). Also included in this kit are 2x 60x90cm Softboxes, 1x 95cm Softbox and 1x 30x120cm Softbox, but similar to the previous kit, the extra brightness produced by the LED200D MKIII makes sure that all of the subjects receive ample coverage. This kit also includes our 2x4m Grey/White Vinyl background to allow you to change these to suit your requirements.
Conclusion
Capturing your Fashion Products properly is vital to entice potential customers to purchase from your E-Commerce shop, and having the correct lighting helps to achieve this. Whether you prefer using Flash lighting or LED lighting, these example lighting set-ups will allow you to capture the best possible shot with ease.
